


Infected

by EzraTheAlbino



Category: Original Work
Genre: Can you spot the hidden meaning?, Creepy, I wrote this for my school magazine, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 13:17:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EzraTheAlbino/pseuds/EzraTheAlbino
Summary: You are coming back from a meeting with your editor only to have a strange encounter with an even stranger man.





	Infected

**Author's Note:**

> Stay 'till the end to find out the hidden meaning or if you guessed correctly. Please, comment if you got it right or say what you thought it meant if you go it wrong.

I’m walking back from the cafe I frequent.  My editor needed to talk to me about the latest chapter in my novel.  The streets are mostly void of people, but there is still the occasional pedestrian meandering on the litter-filled streets.  I hear the thumping of footfalls behind me.  I take a peak and there’s a man.  He is keeping his head low and is walking at an uneven pace somewhere between walking and running.  The way he’s walking is strange though; it’s like he doesn’t have any joints to allow his arms and legs to bend.  He is slowly closing the distance between us; I don’t think anything of it though.  People and cars pass cars all the time. Why should this occurrence be any different?

 

I take a peek behind me and see that the man is now only a foot behind me.  He grabs my right elbow; his arm is stiff behind my back keeping me from backing away from his hold. 

 

“I need to speak with you,” he whispers into my ear.  Without giving a chance to reply he pulls me into an alley.   The person threw me against the brick wall,  I slide down it scraping my back along the way.

 

The man bends at the waist to be at my level and leans into me.  The whites of his eyes are rimmed with red, nearly black. His nose is almost touching mine and I can feel his breath when he speaks, “We all have it in us. We are all infected.”  I have no idea what he meant.  Infected?  Oh, no.  Is this one of those hippie guys my parents warned me about when I was little?  The ones that go around ranting about how we are killing the Earth and need to fix it.  Why else would a random guy off the street drag me into this dank alley?  More importantly, why did nobody see him do it?  Sure the streets weren’t crowded, but there were a few people around.  The shopkeeper on the corner?  The biker that passed just before I was grabbed?  The guy in the suit who got out of a cab and walked into a building just 10 yards away? Does anyone care?

 

I summon all of my strength and courage to push him off me.  His dry, grey tinted skin flakes and cracks under my hands.  “I’m sorry, I have someplace I need to be,”  I lie through my teeth.

 

“No! You must listen to me!” he grabs my ankle and pulls.  I fall flat on my rear, “I’m trying to warn you! The people around you are in danger!”

 

“Get off me!” I demand.  I scramble away from him and kick him several times in the process.  I get back onto my feet.  I slowly walk from the alley, not taking my eyes off him even to blink. The people around me?  What’s that supposed to mean? I round the corner and speed walk down the rest of the street.  When I believe I am far enough, I sprint home.

 

I run up to my porch and reach in my pocket for my keys, only to find they are no longer there. “That dang hippie!”  I shout, realizing how loud I am only when the echoes resound throughout the night.  I jump off my porch and open the garage.  I walk through my garage and into my house.

 

“Great, now some hippie can get into my house whenever it pleases him,”  I grumble as I walk into my kitchen.

 

I see my husband sitting in the living room on his wingback chair facing away from me.  “Hey, honey.  How was your day?”  I ask. 

 

No response. 

 

“Sorry, I wasn’t here when you got home.  My editor needed to meet with me and talk about my article.  I didn’t tell you because I thought you would still be at work and I know how you can get when you break your concentration,”  I laughed a little at the end. Still, no response.

 

I was starting to get worried, so I walk over to him.  I was shocked from the sight in front of me.  His skin is black as the night outside and cracking.  His eyes were pure onyx, like his pupil had consumed the rest.  His jaw was unhinged into an eternal scream.  It was as if he was a mummy from ancient times even though he was younger than me; there was also a red, almost black fluid leaking from his orifices.

 

“Oh, darling.  You’ll catch a cold like that,” I tell him gingerly laying a blanket on his sleeping form.  I walk back into the kitchen after kissing his flaking forehead.  I pick up an apple.  The bright red skin and soft, brown flesh of the apple is my favorite.  The way it’s so soft and delicate that basically anything could ruin it.

 

I walked back through the living room.  I stop at where my husband sat sleeping and face him, “Good night, sweety.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't see it I'm going to tell you now. This was supposed to be a metaphor for society and that we are only worried about the little things, like winning an election, than the big things, like world hunger and poverty. The narrator is supposed to be all of us. The husband is supposed to represent our problems. The "Hippie" is supposed to be the people who are conscious of all of the things happening and bringing awareness to them. The apple is supposed to signal that there is a bigger meaning to all of this, because the outside was misleading to the inside (don't we all hate these apples?).


End file.
